Spring BreakersReview

From the mischievous mind of Harmony Korine – screenwriter of Kids and director of Mr Lonely and Trash Humpers – comes Spring Breakers, a flashy attack on consumerism and the American dream that plays like an arthouse episode of Girls Gone Wild.

And while it’s hardly mainstream material, the film will doubtless find an audience and generate plenty of column inches thanks to the presence of Tween heroines Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, both of whom de-Disneyfy their images as the film becomes ever darker and more explicit.

Exit Theatre Mode

That said, Korine starts as he means to go on and proceedings commence with a lengthy montage of topless girls chugging beers on the beach and licking red, white and blue ice lollies in lengthy slow-motion shots. Subtle it ain’t.

We are then introduced to our four protagonists – Faith (Gomez), the sweet, religious one, and Candy (Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) and Brit (Ashely Benson), her three skanky childhood friends whose love of drink, drugs and little more makes them somewhat interchangeable.

Their dream is to head to Tampa for the debauched hedonism of ‘Spring Break,’ but a lack of fund puts a serious spanner in the works. These girls live in the land of opportunity however, and so their ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme – sans Faith – involves stealing a car, donning balaclavas, brandishing hand-guns and robbing a Chicken Shack.

These early sequences are dim, dark and caked in a neon haze, but when they finally hit the beach with stolen loot in hand, daylight floods the screen, and we are treated to yet more montages of guys and girls getting messed up, so much so that at times Spring Breakers feels like a extended music video.

Something approaching a storyline then kicks in as a party gets a little too out-of-hand and the girls are arrested, only to be bailed out by Alien, a gangster and wannabe hustler who is all metal teeth and corn-rows.

As played by an unrecognisable and scene-devouring James Franco, Alien's the best thing in the movie; his dialogue is endlessly quotable (“I’m made of money. Look at my f**king teeth”) and his behaviour intimidating and unpredictable.

It’s all too much for Gomez’s character, who immediately gets out of dodge, but not before she’s shared an intense, terrifying and beautifully played scene with Franco.

However, the rest of the girls embrace Alien’s lawless lifestyle and it soon becomes clear they are more than a match for his foul-mouthed patter and macho posturing.

What follows plays out like a dark fairytale as the girls go down the rabbit hole in search of sex, drink, drugs and adrenaline-fuelled adventure, with nothing considered too excessive or amoral for their twisted tastes.

But while they are clearly having the time of their lives onscreen, it’s a little less exciting for the viewer, with the film suffering from issues with pacing and several of the less interesting sequences lasting way too long.

Korine, his cinematographer Benoit Debie and editor Douglas Crise clearly want the film to have a dream-like quality, with dialogue looping and overlapping and the action chopping back and forth, but at times they are in danger of sending the viewer to sleep.

That said, the thumping soundtrack – a collaboration between Skrillex and Cliff Martinez – injects an adrenaline shot into proceedings, while two sequences stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of the movie.

The first is the aforementioned robbery, a masterful one-take shot during which we only glimpse the horror unfolding inside the Chicken Shack.

The second is a surreal slice of celluloid perfection during which Franco sits at a pool-side piano and performs a cover of Britney Spears’ ‘Everytime’ as his bikini-clad machine-gun toting girls dance and sing, all of which is intercut with a violent hold-up.

If only the rest of the film had been that delightfully deranged. Instead it’s an entertaining, aesthetically thrilling - but ultimately quite empty - parable for our times.

If we truly had a sense of who these girls are the narrative might have been more compelling. But Korine puts the emphasis on mood over narrative, making for an enjoyable ride, but one that states the obvious about where America is at the moment rather than delving any deeper.

Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and desperately wants to duet with James Franco now. His poor excuse for banter can be found on both Twitter and MyIGN.

The Verdict

Harmony Korine's film is entertaining and at times exhilarating, but ultimately lacks substance.